News

February, 2015

• 19 February

  Visa Expands Checkout Availability; Says User Base Climbs to More Than 3 Million

  Visa Inc. on Thursday said it is expanding the availability of its Visa Checkout online and mobile wallet to 13 more nations beyond the three original ones. Starting today, consumers in Argentina, Chile, Peru, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, and China can use Visa Checkout to pay for purchases on …
• 19 February

  AmEx Vows Appeal After Federal Court Deals T&E Giant a Loss Over Its Anti-Steering Rules

  By Jim Daly and John Stewart Continuing its recent string of setbacks, American Express Co. Thursday lost a crucial federal court fight in which it defended policies banning merchants from steering AmEx cardholders to cheaper forms of payment. The U.S. Department of Justice and 17 state attorneys general challenged the …
• 19 February

  DoJ, Merchant Group Hail Judge’s Ruling Against AmEx Anti-Steering Rules

  By Jim Daly The U.S. Department of Justice and a merchant group focused on payment card acceptance costs Thursday afternoon hailed a federal district judge’s ruling striking down American Express Co.’s rules banning its merchants from steering AmEx cardholders to lower-cost forms of payment. Earlier in the day, New York …
• 18 February

  Heartland’s Decision to Wind Down Leaf Throws Spotlight on Tablet Software

  Merchants using Leaf, a tablet-based point-of-sale system that its owner Heartland Payment Systems Inc. is winding down, will continue to be supported, but there will be no further sales of the system, Leaf president Sarah McCrary tells Digital Transactions News. The expense and complication of supporting hardware to accept chip …
• 18 February

  Samsung Buys LoopPay, a Key Building Block for a Samsung M-Payments Service

  LoopPay Inc., the mobile payments company that relies on magnetic fields to connect devices to point-of-sale terminals, has a new owner: Samsung Electronics America Inc. The deal, announced in an email to LoopPay users, all but confirms that smart-phone maker Samsung has plans to launch what has been a much-rumored …
• 17 February

  Merchants Worldwide Are Installing More Contactless Terminals—And Turning on NFC

  With technologies like Apple Pay and host card emulation reviving prospects for mobile payments using near-field communication, merchants are starting to install more NFC devices at the point of sale. And, more important, they’re starting to turn on the NFC capability. That’s according to a report issued Tuesday by Berg …
• 16 February

  COMMENTARY: EMV, End of E-Commerce, IPOs Will Reshape Payments This Year

  In the far future, when someone sits down and writes the definitive history of payments (riveting), 2014 is going to be a big year. Bitcoin reached historic highs but then went sideways. We had the introduction of Apple Pay, which was a major step forward for mobile wallets. The sheer …
• 16 February

  With Its Dinerware and pcAmerica Deals, Heartland Lays out a New Direction for Leaf

  Heartland Payment Systems Inc. has acquired point-of-sale system developers Dinerware Inc. and pcAmerica, both makers of restaurant point-of-sale systems, Heartland announced Friday. Terms were not disclosed. The acquisitions spurred Princeton, N.J.-based Heartland to create a dedicated business unit call Heartland Commerce, which includes Dinerware, pcAmercia, Xpient, Leaf, and Liquor POS. …
• 16 February

  Already on the Way Out, SSL Data Security Could Get the Boot From the PCI Council

  The PCI Security Standards Council issued a bulletin Friday saying that no version of the Secure Socket Layers (SSL) protocol for protecting Internet communications meets its definition of strong cryptography. Accordingly, the Council said it will soon revise versions 3.0 of its main Payment Card Security data-security standard and the …
• 13 February

  Once They Use It, Consumers Favor NFC Over QR Codes, NFC Forum Survey Says

  More consumers are satisfied using near-field communications (NFC) technology with their smart phones than express the same satisfaction using Quick Response codes, finds a survey by Strategy Analytics Inc., a Boston-based consulting firm. In the survey, commissioned by NFC advocate group NFC Forum, 76% of consumers said they were satisfied …